


Echoes of Darkness

by Thia (Jennaria)



Series: All Souls [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Halloween, Hobbit Culture & Customs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-19
Updated: 2004-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:09:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24427045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennaria/pseuds/Thia
Summary: 'We would be honored if you would come to Brandy Hall, Buckland, for a celebration of All Soul's Night, upon the night itself.'
Relationships: Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee
Series: All Souls [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1763998
Kudos: 2





	Echoes of Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in 'Inside A Song.' Beta thanks to irisbleu and caraloup.

The invitation arrived in the mail a week before. _We would be honored if you would come to Brandy Hall, Buckland, for a celebration of All Souls' Night, upon the night itself_ \-- this much in a thin, crooked sort of hand. Below, in a clear, flowing writing Sam knew as well as his own garden: _Do come, Sam. I'll be waiting._

Sam folded the invitation up again, and thought for a long, hard moment. There were any number of reasons why he shouldn't go. The apples in Bag End's orchard would be ripe any day now and ready for the picking. The Gaffer came down with a headcold only last week. And the Cottons would expect him over there to help with the harvest. But the apples could wait a day or two, if the lads hereabouts didn't up and strip the orchard, and Daisy hardly let Sam _near_ the Gaffer with all her cosying and pampering of the old hobbit, and the Cottons wouldn't begrudge him a trip to Buckland, so long as he brought back some of Hanna Brandybuck's famous apple wine. More, Sam's own heart longed for Buckland, for all he'd never been there before. Frodo Baggins spent every All Souls' with his Brandybuck kin all the years Sam had known him. A few weeks' separation was nothing to friends, such as he and Frodo had once been. To a new-trothed lover, it felt long as winter.

He arrived at the front doors of Brandy Hall just as the twilight of All Soul's wrapped itself around the Shire, tired to his bones and sticky with road-dust from two days of catching rides in farm-carts when he could and walking when he couldn't. Brandy Hall loomed up in front of him out of the dusk as if it were a mountain, not a hill, the round door outlined in pale stone instead of proper wood. Sam gritted his teeth, and tapped at the door.

He stepped back and waited. The windows were set deep enough in the hill that he couldn't see if anyone had lit the soul-candles, or indeed any sort of candle. He couldn't hear any sound of movement beyond the door. _There isn't anyone there_ \-- breath of wind across his shoulders, as night's darkness settled in -- _they aren't here, you've been led out here and vulnerable, Samwise Gamgee, on All Souls' Night..._

 _No. Mr. Frodo wouldn't desert me_. Sam knocked again, harder, to drown out the whispers of illogical fear in his mind. The sound echoed loud in the courtyard.

The door swung back like a mouth opening, revealing a lady waiting with a candle in her hand. All in white, Sam thought for a breathless moment, and then he blinked and his eyes adjusted to the candle, and he saw she wore ordinary undyed homespun, fine woven to be sure but not the deathly white he'd first thought. She smiled at him, her candle flame flickering in the breeze. "Good evening. Are you Samwise Gamgee?"

"I am," Sam said, with an effort at a smile of his own. He groped for the invitation in his pocket. "I, er, was told --"

The lady stepped back away from the door, without waiting for his stammering excuses. "This way," she said, words dropping evenly into the silence. The part of Sam that still shivered with nerves fancied he could see the ripples afterward in the air. "We've been expecting you. Close the door behind you."

She led him down halls too large and shadowy for hobbits, their soft footfalls muffled in the silence that had followed them indoors. Sam looked about as they walked: he'd heard of the grandeurs of Brandy Hall from Mr. Frodo, but he'd never thought -- never _wanted_ \-- to see them for himself. Cold and empty, for all he could see. Where was Frodo? Where were the Brandybucks? Where was anyone?

"This way," said his guide again. She held a door open, and through it spilled warmth and light. Sam hurried in, to find a tub full of steaming water and a crackling fire to give light. The door clicked shut behind him, and he glanced back, only to find the lady had shut herself on the other side of it. Not that it would have been seemly for her to stay, but...

Sam abandoned that line of thought. Instead, he dropped his pack neatly by the door, and shed his clothing quick as he could, so he could wash. The water smelled of some sort of spicy oil: he hoped they hadn't prepared it for some Brandybuck and put him here by mistake. Sam hesitated and glanced back at the door. The lady had _said_ , 'we've been expecting you.' She called him by name and brought him here. He'd worry about mistakes when someone came to try to take the bath away from him. He lowered himself into the warm water, hissing a little at the heat's sting -- his skin flushed pink with it. He leaned back into it carefully, enjoying the luxury, then sat up again and began briskly scrubbing away the dirt and sweat.

He emerged from the bath only to find a towel warming by the fire. Had that been there when he came in? He'd have noticed it, blocking the flames -- but perhaps not. He'd been tired, and focused on the bath and little else. He wrapped himself in the towel, not without a twinge of uncertainty, and looked around for his pack and clothing. Gone. In their place, grander clothes lay waiting for him to don them -- a tunic with delicately threaded embroidery at the collar, a waistcoat of deep green brocade like midsummer leaves, dark trousers of wool as finewoven as the dress of the lady who'd greeted him. Sam looked around frantically, but he didn't see anyone waiting about for his reaction to this unwanted gift. Nor could he see any other door through which a servant might have come when he wasn't watching.

Sam took a deep breath, then let it out. "I heard the Buckland folk were odd," he muttered to himself, "but this goes above and beyond the call of just being _odd_ , to my mind." There was nothing for it, (unless he meant to wander Brandy Hall in naught but his towel) but to don the clothes he was left, and then go looking for the lady who'd led him here to tell her he'd finished his bath, and would she please tell him what she'd done with his pack and clothing?

_Frodo would know._

Perhaps, Sam allowed to himself. He could see, in his mind's eye, Frodo's not-quite smile, and the lazy heat in his eyes. _Green suits you, Sam_ \-- Hadn't Frodo said so just a few weeks before? But Sam swallowed back the temptation to go searching for Frodo, before bidding greeting to his hostess or joining the celebration to which he'd been invited. Frodo might be anywhere in the smial. Sam would do better to find the hobbit in white, and settle the matter of where the rest of his clothing had gone before finding that the borrowed finery was like to vanish as mysteriously as it appeared.

An unlit candle waited for him just outside the door: it was the work of a moment to kindle it with a taper lit from the fire, and then head out in search of another living body. Sam's guide hadn't brought him so far from the main hall that he couldn't find his way back again, after a missed turn or two. The main hall led him, after a few minutes walk, to a door twice as tall as he was, decorated with metal-work and carvings. Sam gave up on the carvings after a bit of study: in the flickering light of his candle, he couldn't properly tell if they formed the seal of Buckland, the history of the Shire, or a rude joke inscribed in Elven runes by some past Master of Buckland with more education than propriety. Instead, he scrabbled for the handle, and swung the door open.

The sounds caught him first -- murmur of several voices, the crackle of a fire, clink of silverware on plates. No wonder he hadn't seen the Brandybucks: they must all be in here. The red glow of firelight peeped around the edges of a screening wall in front of him, blocking the hall itself from Sam's view. Sam blew out his candle, closed the door behind him, and glanced back and forth. Near as he could see, it wouldn't make no difference which way he went, but it didn't do to --

Two young hobbits came tearing around the edge of the screening wall, and Sam automatically flattened himself back against the door, out of their way. They didn't seem to see him. The chaser caught up with the chased just before the far edge. "Tag!" he cried. "Now it's _your_ turn to do a dare."

The chased sagged back against the wall with a grimace broad enough for Sam to see it clearly, even here in the shadows. "So long as it's not the Barrows one, Berry."

"Oh, come on, Thon. It's just a touch of a doorsill. I'm not telling you to go _in_."

Thon looked away from Berry, his face hidden from Sam again. "It's too far away." The words came out in a quick spurt, as though he didn't like to say them, or didn't think Berry would believe them.

Berry didn't. "You're _frightened_ ," he said, turning the words into a sing-song taunt.

Thon looked up sharp at that, eyes narrowed. "Oh, yes, and when our ball went over the Hedge this afternoon, you went right after it, didn't you!"

Berry lost his teasing smile. "That's different."

"I'd have to go right through the Old Forest to get _to_ the Barrow Downs," Thon said. He stood up a mite taller, but Sam could still see the whites of his eyes and his hands fisted by his sides -- he was nervous, near as nervous as Sam had been not an hour since. "So there. Come on, I know where Aunt Esmeralda left the spare pies."

Sam tucked the candle onto the floor just next to the door, then followed the two young hobbits around the edge of the blocking wall. He found himself in a hall twice as grand as the entrance. Dining room, perhaps, Sam guessed, from the number of tables pushed to the edges of the room, but not the sort of dining room that he could imagine eating in as a matter of course. The walls here, too, were lined with cold stone instead of wood, and the fireplace held a fire large enough to roast a hobbit whole. Folk drifted about in the room, going to and from the tables (which held meats and breads and fresh fruit, the smells rich and tart in Sam's mouth), and either settling onto the chairs scattered about, or sitting down by the fire. A gray-haired hobbit stood there, voice rising and falling in the rhythms of a story: Sam caught the words _skeletal hand_ and _knock, knock, knock at the door_ , and decided he'd rather find himself supper than listen just yet.

He found the lady who had guided him, instead. She stood behind one of the tables, conferring with another hobbit over a nearly empty tray of rolls. Sam cleared his throat awkwardly, and she glanced back over her shoulder with a smile. "Ah, splendid, you found your way." She took his arm before he could say _beg your pardon_ , and towed him over to another table where plates lay stacked a dozen deep. "We aren't standing on ceremony, not for supper at least, so serve yourself as you will. You're just in time." And with that cryptic remark, she vanished back to her conference.

Sam stared down at the plates, then looked around. None of the hobbits here appeared to be paying him any mind: he might as well have been invisible. _Well_ , he told himself, _if I'm to be invisible, then I'll be invisible with a full belly_. He didn't see Frodo, but the firelight filled the hall with leaping shadows so's you could hardly see anyone. Frodo was here. Frodo must be here. Else Sam would just have to go looking for him.

A momentary pang struck him, there alone in the hall -- like the windvoice outside, the ridiculous fear that Frodo _wasn't_ here. Sam grimaced at himself, and picked up a plate. He wasn't that hungry any more, but no sense in letting things go to waste.

Frodo wasn't in the chairs -- they all seemed to be filled with elderly matrons, whispering behind their hands. Sam made his way over to the fire as he finished eating, and paused at the edge of the crowd, looking over the hobbits sprawled on the floor. Children, utterly absorbed in the story, gasping as the hobbit hero explored the lair of his undead foe -- a few worried mothers, eating and frowning over their children's antics -- over there, Merry Brandybuck, talking to --

Sam's heart seemed to stop in his chest, even as Merry's companion turned around at a gesture. Frodo smiled at him, and extended a hand as if to say _come, Sam. I'm waiting._

"Saradoc! Aren't you finished yet?"

Startled, Sam looked around. The lady in white had finished her conversation by the supper-tables: now she, too, stood on the edge of the crowd by the fireplace, smiling at the gray-haired hobbit who'd been telling the ghost-story. The hobbit so addressed broke off, despite the cries of disappointment from his listeners, and looked about himself in mock astonishment. "Is it that time already?"

"Almost past time, Father," Merry called.

Saradoc tched his tongue and smiled out at the audience. "My goodness, where _does_ the time go?" The older folk smiled back, and one or two of the little ones giggled, and Sam realized on a blink that this wasn't a reminder, it was the start of the ritual itself. And him still separated from Frodo, with no way to get over there without making himself the object of stares: the crowd betwixt them had doubled within the past dozen heartbeats, and thickened more with every further second passing, as more hobbits came to settle down on the floor, squeezing in next to friends and family. Saradoc patted his pockets in apparent search of something, and Merry tugged Frodo down to sit next to him. With a final look at Sam, Frodo did so.

Sam flushed with self-directed fury. If he'd only thought a little quicker --! Well, what's done is done, as the Gaffer would say. He eased himself over to the wall next to the fire, set his empty plate on the floor, and leaned up against the stone, arms crossed over his chest. He'd be in no one's way over here. And from this vantage, he could fill his heart with the golden touch of firelight on Frodo's face, without any Brandybuck to stare and shake his head.

"I seem to have lost the list," Saradoc announced at last. (More laughter.) "So I shall have to do it from memory." (Cheers from all assembled.) Saradoc folded his hands behind his back, and for a moment all Sam could think of was a naughty schoolboy set to reciting his lessons. Then Saradoc spoke again, and all comparisons flew out of Sam's head.

"This is the Recitation of the Dead, that our kinsmen who have left this world behind may not be forgotten. Hear and remember. Lily Bolger, born Goold. Asphodel Burrows, born Brandybuck. Poppy Bolger, born Chubb-Baggins --"

The list went on and on, solemn and relentless, the names of all the hobbits who had died since last All Soul's, from old Ponto Goodbody who'd been well over a hundred, to little Prisca Brandybuck, born last spring and dead by fall. The crowd of hobbits muttered when Saradoc reached the name of Otho Sackville-Baggins. Frodo, who had kept his eyes fixed on the flames, looked up at Saradoc then, and shook his head ever so slightly. Saradoc stumbled in his naming, then continued with Belinda Northtook.

 _Not Bilbo_. Sam nodded in satisfaction. Frodo wouldn't let them name Bilbo as one of the dead.

"--these are the dead, our kinsmen who have left this world behind. Hear and remember."

A generalized mumble from the crowd, something like, "We will," and then the hobbits on the edges were up on their feet again and heading purposefully for the tables of food. Saradoc accepted a glass of wine that appeared, wizard-like, in his hand, gulped it down, then said, "Now then! Where was I before duty called?"

Sam pushed away from the wall again, as the crowd thinned. Frodo remained where he had last seen him, lolling on the ground, listening to Saradoc's tale. As Sam maneuvered through the other hobbits, he could not but listen too, though the story was not one to put his mind at ease. "...as Falco pushed open the door, his candle went out -- _poh_! He didn't need it, because there was a circle of a window, as tall as he was and taller, that let in the moonlight, but the window also let in the bitter cold. And besides, I think Falco would rather not have seen what he saw: the vampire himself, pale as corpses, lying on a couch with the body of his latest victim beside him."

Frodo looked up at Sam. "You're here."

"Yes, sir," said Sam, for want of anything better to say or courage to say it, out here in the open. He folded his arms over his chest again.

Frodo chuckled, and slid his hand up Sam's leg. Startled, Sam let his hands fall to his sides: Frodo took one in a tight grip and pulled himself to his feet. "You looked like you were about to scold me," he said lightly. Sam met his eyes, but Frodo's back was to the fire and his expression was all but hidden in shadow. His hands were not. One came up to brush a curl back out of Sam's face, while the other kept hold of the hand Frodo had captured. "Come with me," Frodo said.

"...sir?" To leave in the middle of the party? Sam fair ached for Frodo's touch, but -- here? Now? In front of all the Brandybucks?

Frodo leaned forward and touched his lips to Sam's, warm with his breath. "Come with me," he repeated, stepped back, and tugged at Sam's hand.

Sam followed.

Frodo didn't pause to bid good evening to their host and hostess, nor to pick up a candle. Instead, he led Sam down through dark halls that twisted and turned. He paused each time Sam stumbled over his own unseen feet, to soothe Sam with an invisible caress down his back or a kiss to Sam's palm. Just when Sam opened his mouth to ask where, exactly, Frodo meant to take him, Frodo let him go, and Sam heard the soft scrape of wood over carpet. A door opening -- yes, there was the light.

Only the light was wrong. Not flickering, golden light such as a fire cast, or candles, but a pale blue wash across the floor that pooled at his toes. Sam stepped hesitantly into the room, only the warmth of Frodo's presence just behind him giving him that much courage. That pale light put him more in mind of shadow-tales than of lovers' reunion.

"There's nothing to be frightened of." Frodo's voice, husky in his ear. He didn't touch Sam.

Nothing? No, not really. Sam wasn't fool enough not to know that Saradoc gave the vampire in the tale a room with a great round window, letting in the moonlight, precisely because the little Brandybucks would recognize such a room. And the wind whispering outside the glass, faintly audible still: that's all it was, wind. Sam swallowed, and firmly pushed aside his childish nervousness. "Frodo?" His voice wanted to quaver.

For answer, he felt a slight draft of air against his neck -- his hair pulled back out of the way, and then Frodo's kiss against the sensitive skin just there, beneath his ear. Sam let out his breath in a slow trickled sigh, his eyes sliding closed despite himself as Frodo traced kisses down, down -- pulling aside Sam's tunic and waistcoat, out of the way -- down to the join of neck and shoulder, where Frodo bit gently, scrape of teeth across Sam's skin, sending a flash of fire straight through Sam. His eyes flew open again. "Frodo!"

Frodo didn't answer. Instead, he reached around Sam, up to his neck to begin undoing Sam's buttons. Sam helped as well as he could, having a better angle on them, but he kept getting distracted by the touch of Frodo's tongue against that same spot, by Frodo pressing close behind him. Frodo stepped away abruptly. Sam cried out in wordless protest, before he felt the tug at his neck, and extended his arms backward to allow Frodo to pull off tunic and waistcoat together.

"They gave me this room when I first came to live at Brandy Hall," Frodo said. With a final tug he freed the tunic from Sam's hands, and Sam heard a faint rustle behind him as Frodo tossed the clothing aside. "A joke of my cousins, I believe." His arms came around Sam again, rubbing up and down in long slow strokes. Sam's breath caught at the feeling, not quite enough to do more than snare Sam's mind on the feel of Frodo's warm hands on his cool skin.

A joke of his cousins -- what, a bedroom with a window? Sam opened his mouth to object, and then for the first time looked through the window glass. There, a few hundred yards distant, lay the Brandywine, its waters absorbing the moonlight without reflection, with trees closegathered along the far side. "Didn't you mind?" he managed, staring out the cold window at the cold waters.

Frodo came around to kneel in front of him, his hands going to Sam's belt. "Not any more."

For a moment, Sam minded very much that he couldn't see Frodo's eyes. The world beyond that window was chilly and colorless under the moon's light, but Frodo's eyes would be -- would be -- his thoughts stammered and shook as Frodo undid belt and trousers, pushed them aside, then took Sam into his mouth with a pleased murmur as if to say _mine_. It wasn't what Sam wanted, not exactly, but tongue and teeth and wet heat around him fair washed his mind clear of other desires, drawing him on into a slow-rising flood of wanting. When Frodo let him go again, Sam resisted with a wordless groan, reaching out to draw Frodo back.

Frodo ducked into the shadows away from the window, fading under Sam's touch so Sam blinked hard and wondered for a heartbeat if his Frodo had somehow vanished and been replaced by this...other Frodo, all smoke and darkness. Then he heard Frodo's familiar chuckle, and felt Frodo's grip firm about his wrist, reassuringly warm and solid. "Come, Sam."

The moonlight lapped up against the dust ruffle of Frodo's bed, but the bed itself lay in not-quite-reassuring shadow. Frodo tugged Sam down onto the coverlet, arranging him to his satisfaction with a gentle push here, a brush of the fingers there, until Sam found himself sprawled out on the bed, and Frodo --

Frodo stepped back into the moonlight. He waited until Sam looked up at him, though how he could tell _where_ Sam was looking was anyone's guess, and only then raised his hands to his own buttons.

He took so _long_. Sam already ached with the wanting, with the slow baring of Frodo's skin, clear and pale as the moonlight that lit it silver-bright. But Frodo whispered to him as he dropped his waistcoat, as he slid his tunic from his shoulders.

_I missed you._

_I watched for you all day_.

Frodo's trousers sagged to the floor, and Frodo stepped out of their empty embrace with careless ease, coming over to join Sam on the bed at last, out of the chilling light of the moon. He leaned forward, one last whisper as his mouth met Sam's: _I love you._

The kiss was messy and awkward, teeth clashing, and Sam didn't care, couldn't make himself back away from this silent desperation. He fisted his hands in the coverlet, pulling it all askew, and Frodo at last backed off, breathing quickly. "Sam --"

"I know," Sam said, although he didn't -- anything to keep Frodo from retreating into that controlled _tease_. He wanted Frodo as mindless as - as -- as _he_ was. He could feel Frodo's skin, not just warm now but hot, where Frodo's arm rested against his thigh and the press of Frodo's shoulder over his chest. More, Frodo trembled against him, as if he, too, feared something unknown, even here safe with his kin and his lover. Sam unknotted one hand from the crumpled coverlet, reached out and ran one hand down Frodo's back, pressing a bit to try to urge Frodo forward onto the bed.

Frodo came, with a huff of breath that was almost but not quite a laugh, and knelt over Sam. Still too far away. Sam squirmed restlessly, trying to get closer, but instead Frodo actually sat _back_ , even farther, his hand on Sam's hip.

Sam stilled himself and stared up at the canopy above him, refusing to look at the shadow that was Frodo. What did Frodo want? What was missing? _Something_ must be missing, or else Frodo would be down here with him, warm against Sam. He didn't want to play guessing games, not now: to have to bat away the windwhispers of doubt.

"You're so beautiful," Frodo said softly.

Sam flushed, and for the first time felt glad of the shadows that hid it. He shouldn't have doubted. He reached up, and this time Frodo came to his tug, taking Sam's mouth with a little hum of pleasure.

It wasn't enough. He wanted -- he wanted -- Sam broke the kiss this time, and struggled out from under Frodo, turning over beneath him. His heart pounded in his throat, and his skin prickled, hot and cold together. He hoped Frodo understood what he meant, because he wasn't certain if he could find the words.

Frodo hesitated over him for long enough that Sam could count the knots under palms and knees in the quilted coverlet under him. Then -- a warm hand laid against the small of Sam's back and a quiet exhalation that didn't quite hold words. Sam bit his lips, trying to let himself fall into the _sensation_. Love and trust could only take a body so far before fear took over, whether or no. He couldn't guess what Frodo had almost said -- whisper of yearning, whisper of a darker triumph like the shadows of Sam's worry. He hoped it was the former.

And then he felt Frodo's hands on him again, and he forgot to be afraid. Frodo brushed scattered touches over Sam's back and sides like drops of rainwater: the nape of Sam's neck, under one shoulder blade, the tender flesh of Sam's belly. Sam closed his eyes and bit his lip on the waiting, long breaths shuddering in and out as Frodo roused him higher and higher still, never touching where Sam expected and wanted to be touched.

He didn't expect Frodo's fingers sliding into him, sudden fullness like a thunderclap through him. It hurt a bit, aye, but the touch was smoothed with lotion or oil, something slick. Sam opened his eyes and breathed through it, the coverlet scrunching under his hands again as he tried to keep from tensing up as Frodo withdrew his fingers again. Now -- please, now, before --

As if in answer, Frodo slid into him, heat and thickness that touched the sullen fires inside Sam, and Sam heard his own name whispered in his ear, over and over again as though Frodo meant it for a talisman. Sam took a deep breath, then moved back into Frodo with an awkward thrust. Frodo broke off, and laughed -- not cold, or smug, but joyous -- and he caught Sam's hips in both hands to still them. " _Sam_." He withdrew, then thrust in again, teaching Sam the rhythm that would best please them both.

Sam learnt it, and moved with it, not rain nor fire but a dance old as Middle-earth itself. He didn't care any more what darkness might lie outside that window, or what might peer in at them. This wasn't some fireside tale. This was Frodo, _his_ Frodo, and his heart felt like it might burst from it, Frodo's voice in his ear, _close I'm close I -- Sam, I love you!_ Glory like midsummer nooning, the heat washing all through his bones.

It took Sam more than a little to notice the little things again – that Frodo lay heavy atop him, half-asleep in the aftermath, and they’d made a right mess of the quilt. And the air was cold without blankets over them. Frodo mumbled plaintively as Sam moved out from under him, and stripped the damp coverlet off the bed, tossing another blanket up there in its stead. Sam put the quilt over by the door, to be laundered in the morning, and turned back to the bed to find Frodo under the covers, the corner thrown back invitingly. He could see Frodo's eyes now, warm with love no cold wind could blow away.

"Come, Sam," Frodo said softly.

Sam went.

-end-


End file.
